Part III Chapter 8 Doctor Dolittle's Garden by Hugh Lofting
FLOWERS OF MYSTERY
Anyone can very readily imagine into what a condition of extraordinary excitement this statement of the Doctor's would be likely to put me. All sorts of visions and possibilities passed before my mind. But so anxious was he that no false alarm should be spread abroad till he was certain of his facts, that he strictly forbade me to whisper a word of the matter to anyone before he gave me permission. He said nothing annoyed him so much as the half-baked announcements of scientists promising all sorts of wonders that never come true. And it must be said for John Dolittle himself that he never published a word that he was not prepared to stand by and prove. But then he very seldom "talked for the newspapers," as it is called, anyway.
Before many days had passed we decided that the flowers the moth had brought with him were almost as complicated a mystery as the great insect himself. The Doctor was, as I have said, in constant anxiety lest they should wither. It was not to be hoped of course that they would last more than a few days. His progress with the moth's "language" continued to be tantalizingly slow; and every morning he would go to the little special greenhouse where he kept the blossoms, expecting to find his treasures had wilted and passed away. But morning after morning they seemed as fresh as ever; and he was greatly puzzled. The ice and spraying and other care we gave them could not account for such extraordinary endurance.
The Doctor was pretty good at botany, as he was in all branches of natural history. He found on careful examination that the flowers had certain bulbous knobs just where the stem joined the bell of the blossom itself. These he told me were something quite different from the anatomy of any flower known to the Earth's vegetable kingdom. Of course he had long since supposed that if the moth came from the Moon, he brought the flowers also from that world. He was sure that these knobs or glands, as he called them, accounted for the flower being able to endure so long in a state of perfect freshness after it had been plucked from its plant. He wondered if all moon flowers had the same quality.
But what mystified us a great deal more was that the flower apparently had the power actually to move itself—not only to change its position from that in which it had been laid down, but also, we finally proved, to shift itself from place to place.
The way the Doctor discovered that peculiar quality of the Moon Bells, as we called the flowers, was this: he was in the habit of bringing one of the blossoms twice a day to the moth to smell. He had discovered that the insect derived great benefit from this daily tonic. He told me he was sure that the Moon moth found our earthly atmosphere entirely too sluggish and lacking in oxygen. If we left him for more than about twelve hours without a sniff he got sleepier and sleepier and would finally almost collapse.
At night-time, after the moth had had his final sniff, the Doctor always took the blooms back to the special ice-cooled conservatory to be stored till the next day. Of the five blooms, he used each one conscientiously in turn—thinking thus to economize the precious perfume. But that, by the way, proved to be unnecessary. For the flowers were as good a tonic at the end of the week as they were when we first discovered them. This treatment, with vast quantities of honey for food (which we actually supplied to the insect in barrow-loads), was practically the only treatment which we gave our strange visitor.
Well, as I said, the Doctor would with the greatest care take the flowers back to the greenhouse and lay them down on a thick bed of asparagus fern. But the following morning, as regular as clockwork, he would find the flowers in different positions.
In the beginning, he had not laid any importance to this. But one evening he had put a bloom down almost touching the door of the conservatory because the others were occupying almost the entire space of the small house with their enormous bulk. When he came in the morning, expecting to find the flower he had used the night before close against the door, he was astonished to see that it and all the blossoms had rolled away toward the far end, and that last night's one had swung right around so that the stem instead of the bell was facing the door.
At first he thought some one must have been in during the night and shifted the flowers. But the same thing occurred the following day. As usual he didn't speak of it to me till he was sure of his facts. We sat up one night and watched with a lantern, and both of us distinctly saw the flower nearest the door roll over and change its position.
At first, for my part, I wasn't satisfied.
"Why, Doctor," I said, "that could have been an accident. The way the flower was laid on the uneven bed of fern could account for its rolling a short distance like that!"
"All right," said he, "we will watch again tomorrow night. I am convinced—and I think I can prove to you—that the flowers do not like the draught from the door. They move away from it of their own accord, by rolling."
So the next night we repeated our watch. And this time I was completely convinced. We put two flowers close against the door. After about an hour one of them deliberately began to roll away towards the other end of the conservatory, A little later the other followed, both crowding in on the remainder of the specimens, huddling like sheep that wished to escape a storm. I could hardly believe my eyes. There was no question of accident here.
On our way back to the house the Doctor said: "You know, Stubbins, I feel we are here presented with an almost entirely new problem. There are flowers in our own vegetable kingdom which catch flies and close up at night and things like that. But one that can move itself after it is cut off from its plant is something quite new. You know, Stubbins—er—of course—" (The Doctor hesitated a moment in one of his moods of half embarrassment which had been pretty common of late.) "Er—this whole thing is so new and perplexing—but, well, I've had a notion for some days now that those flowers can communicate with one another."
"You mean that they can talk!" I cried.
"Just that," said he. "The way that they arrange themselves when they crowd up together at the far end of the conservatory—and—and I have even thought I could detect some exchange of conversation. But of course, as I said, it is all so new. I may be wrong."
"Goodness!" I said. "That's a new idea, with a vengeance, isn't it?"
"It is," said he. "But in the Moon?—It may be the oldest idea there is—that flowers can talk. Certainly you and I have evidence already that they can think—and move."